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Announcements, Books

Moon Shouts: The Red Scholar’s Wake Cover Reveal

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The Red Scholar’s Wake by Aliette de Bodard

Coming out from Gollancz on November 24th, hardcover and ebook
Cover artist: Alyssa Winans 

‘So romantic I may simply perish’ Tasha Suri, award-winning author of THE JASMINE THRONE
‘LESBIAN SPACE PIRATES. Enough said.’  Katee Robert, NYT bestselling author of NEON GODS

Xích Si: bot maker, data analyst, mother, scavenger. But those days are over now-her ship has just been captured by the Red Banner pirate fleet, famous for their double-dealing and cruelty. Xích Si expects to be tortured to death-only for the pirates’ enigmatic leader, Rice Fish, to arrive with a different and shocking proposition: an arranged marriage between Xích Si and herself. 

Rice Fish: sentient ship, leader of the infamous Red Banner pirate fleet, wife of the Red Scholar. Or at least, she was the latter before her wife died under suspicious circumstances. Now isolated and alone, Rice Fish wants Xích Si’s help to find out who struck against them and why. Marrying Xích Si means Rice Fish can offer Xích Si protection, in exchange for Xích Si’s technical fluency: a business arrangement with nothing more to it. 

But as the investigation goes on, Rice Fish and Xích Si find themselves falling for each other. As the interstellar war against piracy intensifies and the five fleets start fighting each other, they will have to make a stand-and to decide what kind of future they have together…

An exciting space opera and a beautiful romance, from an exceptional SF author.

Announcements, Discussion

A Constellation of Moon is back

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Hi everyone, after a short hiatus due to life happening and a few health issues, I am back with a lot of books to talk about, a few book boxes to share, more books to talk about, some art, maybe some mentions of streaming and being on Twitch and what that experience means because honestly, it is a whole wild ride)!

Let’s talk a tiny bit about health, in December I had an incident with my hypermobility combined with my hip dysplasia and spinal issues, which meant I couldn’t walk for a few days or bear weight for a while. And then my source of keeping my muscles and joints moving and working, aerial/circus arts, took a break which meant for two weeks a was struggling a little to catch up with moving and being well. And then January has come and gone and I am slowly building up my strength, hosting a party with piñatas as I do every year, and then just trying to live and catch a breath which now I have done.

I could have come back earlier, but the hiatus meant I had the space to return to playing the piano and drawing. I was able to pursue at leisure things that bring me joy without the pressure of having to do them to keep viewers or stats or anything. And don’t get me wrong I love blogging and raving about things, but some days it feels like a grind and pressure and honestly I want to keep filling my life with joy, so a hiatus felt like a good thing to do and to spend some time just recharging. Oh and obviously reading. I finished my Goodreads challenge of 140 books for 2021, with 141 books read. So I challenged myself to 150, which I doubt I will achieve but hey, one has got to try, right?

Also, I may be bringing some aerial/circus content to the blog because I love it and it is a huge part of my life as I mentioned above, so as longas I get my ducks in a row, this should also become part fo the content and I will talk about doing moves, going to see Cirque du Soleil, etc.

Announcements

Moon is on hiatus

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Wishing everyone happy holidays. The blog is on hiatus from now until next year, with potential surprise post, but overall, I am wishing you a good time with your family or yourself, and that it is time to reflect and to be and rest.

Announcements

Happy Holidays

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Wishing you happy holidays! I celebrate Christmas, so Merry Christmas everyone.

This year has been a crazy one so my wishes for you all, is that you received books and the items you wanted the most, and that you managed to have good holidays despite the limitations and restrictions and changes. I also hope that as the year ends and the world wraps up, better things come and you can rest!

Sending my best,

Moon (wiht Vixy and Finn)

*Artwork by myself, background is also photograph taken by myself*

Announcements

The Constellation of Moon

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Welcome to all! If things look slightly different it is because they are.

Apparently life changes as time passes (who knew?) and with it, this blog is evolving alongside me.

So what’s new? For starters, a new name for this blog. After a lot of pondering and to match future things to come and projects, I am now “The Constellation of Moon” because gathering all of who I am and all the opinions is like finding a constellation of stars and the exact shape of what they make. Any star constellation is just a bunch of stars at first and then suddenly they take shape and are something more, including becoming a landmark (or a celestial mark rather). Which is exactly what I am aiming for, to grab all the stars (blog posts) and make my own constellation shining bright in this sky (blogosphere).

We are back to regular programming tomorrow, with posts every other day, and some new areas to come and pique your interests, particularly if you’re someone who enjoys videogames or if you prefer seeing more art and crafts from me, those two should be making an appearance soon enough.

What do you think of the new name and look?

Do you think you’re a constellation of ideas or maybe you think of your personality and identity as something else, what would you call it?

Announcements

Happy Holidays!

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If you followed the saga of “I just realised it is the 23rd and I urgently need to draw an elaborate holiday cheer thing for the 25th” on Twitter, you know I only finished this after midnight and well…

But I did finish it!

Merry Christmas if you celebrate it, if not, whatever you do celebrate, may it be good and peaceful and bring generosity and comfort to you.

Thanks for reading this blog and being part of it and interacting with me throughout that time. ~I truly appreciate it and I hope I managed to share of my love for books and book boxes with you all.

Announcements

Introducing you to Dr. Bea

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Hi all,

Starting in May and from now onwards, I will have a collaborator to the blog, Dr. Bea (she isn’t actually a Doctor, but rather a Librarian and I am very fond of her). Everyone say Hi to her

*queue “Hi Dr. Bea” in singsong chorus*

Dr Bea is part of the book box club but she is in a colder country, Sweden, and she is a delightful fun person who doesn’t like whales or dolphins, but does like fire, theatre and books (obviously). She will be posting some of the reviews for Book Box Club books, and also she will add more books to the review list (specially Mystery and Thriller, we want to broaden the spectrum of what is reviewed here).

But I’d better let her introduce herself a little bit more and better…

🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖🐖

HELLO INTERNET. HELLO BLOG READERS. This is Dr. Bea, also known as The Spiderpig, writing.

Well, Moon kinda’ got all the important facts about my being down in print already, so I’ll just extend them a bit.

  • I do love Mystery and Thriller! But I’m also a sucker for Science Fiction. Not the travelling between different universe’s kind of Sci-fi, but the more (literally) down to earth, possibly near future with available technology kind. (I apparently also love long sentences, but I’ll work on that.) In fact, my first review on Moon’s blog is gonna be up next, and if you’re into governmental conspiracies and futuristic yet realistic adventures, this might very well be THE READ of 2018 for you.
  • Although I’m for some unknown reason terrified of whales, my favourite animals of all times are turtles.
  • At my work as a librarian, I’ve specialized in multilingual reading and Swedish for beginners, focusing on adults rather than children.
  • 2018 has so far been an amazing year reading wise for me, and if you haven’t read them already please give Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, The Hate U Give and Everything Beautiful is Not Ruined a shot. (Realizing now that they’re all contemporary, which usually isn’t my favourite. But all the more reason to check them out.)

Okay, enough rambling on my part! I just once again wanna thank Moon for letting me be a guest blogger here. If you like what you hear from me, you can stalk me at @aspiderpigsreadings on Bookstagram. A lot of bookish pictures as well as longer and shorter reviews going on there as well. Cya’.

Announcements

Hiatus on Deviant-art

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This is going to be a rambling wordy post so feel free to skip it.

I have an account on Deviant-Art (DA) that I have had for over 11 years. And after a lot of umming and erring I made the decision to leave it be.

When I started the internet wasn’t as “full” as it is now and it was quite inspirational to see my artwork there. However as the community grew there, white knights appeared telling you that your artwork (fanart) was a rip off and you had to take it off. There was also the fact that you could spend ages on the site and get no views or anything in return despite working hard on it.

To give you an idea of how much work there was, here’s my stats. Notice how many comments I have given compared to the ones I have received.

DA1

Please ignore the journals and deviations I had many more but I set almost everything to storage.

As you can see, there has been a LOT of effort put into it. However I stayed round DA because I was part of two groups and was helping out in both of them.

Then last year, after having helped out hugely for 3 years, I had a glitch where I couldn’t see my notes during the weekend, and without telling me or even letting me explain what had happened they kicked me out. No explanation, no nothing. It wasn’t until after I asked another member to upload my information that I had missed during the weekend that someone told me it was due to my not replying to notes for a weekend.

Worst part was that I contacted them back and explained the situation, but they never got back to me and completely ignored me afterwards, as if I wasn’t good enough and I had never contributed to it at all. It hurt me and made me want to give up there and then with the site.

I still had the other group and I kept with it until around Christmas when life got a little busy and I wasn’t keeping up with it, so I politely told them I couldn’t keep doing it (despite wanting to).

Without those groups connecting me to DA, I realised there was too much negative in it for me. It wasn’t bringing views or commissions. It wasn’t giving me a platform to socialize with artists (most of them were more critical and harmful than helpful) and it was making me sad.

I have stored over 200 deviations and deleted most of my journals there (11 years worth of artwork and writing). I do not know if I will go back to it or not but for now I am keeping away from it.

And it has been very freeing, as I don’t have all that negativity over my artwork and writing.

It does mean you guys will be getting some of my writing posted here every now and then like yesterday’s poem. Hope you don’t mind!

Announcements

Merry Christmas!

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Captain and Knit Christmas Card.png

Wishing you a merry Christmas and hoping that it is a time well spent with those that matter to you.

(Artwork features The Captain and Knit Anele)

Announcements

Moon Kestrel lands into the blogosphere

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I am Moon Kestrel.

Most of my friends know me as Moon and I look a little like Hermione does but with glasses. I am also very short and I do not wear heels (biomechanics are interesting, plus heels are evil and make me hurt)

20170729_111523Cosplaying Hermione at YALC (Young Adult Literature Convention) with Lisa Williamson.

As you can figure out from the picture (and the the blog tag), I like reading and books. I am quite a geek, nerd and a hipster (before it was even a thing). To be fair, it’s not like I was trying to fill those tags. I just happened to somewhat fit them.

I am smart, love learning, reading, will find shortcuts for maths (and can do mental maths, sometimes quicker than my friends can do them on a calculator), actually I like finding ‘shortcuts’ in everything. I consider them to be ways to be more efficient or quicker or just get better results. Which means some times I will take the ‘long way shortcut’.

I am the girl that always has a book around (they are everywhere, in my purse, on the shelves, on the kitchen counter, on the bedstand, on the floor…). Actually when I moved to the UK from Mexico, one of my three suitcases was full of books. It must have looked suspicious because at airport security they asked me to open it and couldn’t believe their eyes when it was just piles and piles of books. Thankfully books aren’t restricted items, so I just went through and that was it.

Also I like taking opportunities so I have done a lot of things in my life and keep my mind open to new things.

This blog is meant to be a collection of book reviews (because books of course), recipes (who doesn’t like food?), some of my writing and musings, drawings and other things running around my mind.

So I hope you will stay around and like it.